Mobile Library

Synopsis

Twelve-year-old Bobby Nusku is an archivist of his mother. He catalogues traces of her life and waits for her to return home.

Bobby thinks that he's been left to face the world alone until he meets lonely single mother Val and her daughter Rosa. They spend a magical summer together, discovering the books in the mobile library where Val works as a cleaner. But as the summer draws to a close, Bobby finds himself in trouble and Val is in danger of losing her job. There's only one thing to do -- and so they take to the road in the mobile library . . .

Quirky, dark, magical and full of heart, Mobile Library by David Whitehouse is both a tragicomic road trip and a celebration of the adventures that books can take us on. It's a love-letter to unlikely families and the stories that shaped us.

Engagingly offbeat . . . the van becomes as much of a vehicle of fantasy as the Little Prince's biplane or James's giant peach - both a sanctuary from the outside world and a store of limitless possibilities . . . quietly profound . . . genuinely compelling

Guardian

Whitehouse cleverly illustrates the way in which lives and books intertwine

Daily Mail

Powerful, eccentric . . . Whitehouse's writing is energetic and pacey, spiked with startling moments of tenderness and superbly controlled. Don't wait for the inevitable film